LOS ANGELES — Jake Bauers and Garrett Mitchell hit back-to-back homers off Blake Snell as Milwaukee regained the lead in the seventh inning, and the Brewers beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-2 on Wednesday to take a 3-0 lead in the National League Championship Series.
Los Angeles had just taken a 2-1 lead in the sixth before getting stunned. The loss pushed the two-time defending World Series champions to the brink of elimination.
“All three games we’ve played so far, and hopefully that continues, where just every time they score, we come back and score,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “That’s not easy to do in baseball.”
Game 4 is Thursday at Dodger Stadium, where the Brewers can become the first major league club to complete a postseason sweep after getting swept by that same opponent in the previous postseason. Los Angeles took all four games against Milwaukee in the NLCS last year.
The only other time the Dodgers trailed 3-0 in a best-of-seven postseason series, they were swept by the Baltimore Orioles in the 1966 World Series.
The lone team in big league history to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven postseason series was the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 AL Championship Series against the New York Yankees.
“We’ve won four in a row a number of times this year,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We’ve got to win tomorrow. That’s our only focus.”
Coming into the seventh, Snell had retired 14 batters in a row. The first pitch of the game thrown by the two-time Cy Young Award winner was hit for a home run by Jackson Chourio, and his last pitch was Mitchell’s solo shot.
Andrew Vaughn drew a seven-pitch walk to open the inning and was replaced by pinch-runner Christian Yelich. Bauers followed with a 412-foot drive to right field on the 11th pitch of the at-bat for a 3-2 lead as most of the players in Milwaukee’s dugout came onto the field to celebrate.
Mitchell was next and his drive traveled 428 feet to right-center. That chased Snell, who hadn’t given up a home run in 46 1/3 innings this year entering the game. It was only the second time in his career the left-hander served up multiple home runs to left-handed hitters in one game.
And it was the latest relentless plate appearance for Bauers, who drew a 12-pitch walk from Yoshinobu Yamamoto that helped the Brewers go ahead early in Game 2.
Milwaukee, which has never beaten the Dodgers in three previous playoff series, is chasing its second pennant and first in the National League. The Brewers were in the American League when they reached their only World Series, a seven-game loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982.
Snell gave up four runs and four hits in six innings, struck out nine and walked two.
The Brewers extended the lead to 5-2 in the eighth on Justin Wrobleski’s wild pitch that scored Brice Turang, who reached on an infield single and advanced to third on William Contreras’ single. They added another run on Joey Ortiz’s two-strike RBI single in the ninth.
The offensively starved Dodgers took their first lead, 2-1, on Will Smith’s two-run double off reliever Abner Uribe in the sixth.
After rookie starter Robert Gasser pitched five shutout innings, Uribe entered and loaded the bases on walks to Teoscar Hernández, Kyle Tucker and Shohei Ohtani. Smith, who was 1 for 25 in the playoffs, doubled off the left-center fence with one out for his first hit of the NLCS.
DL Hall took over from Uribe and stranded runners at second and third by striking out pinch-hitter Kiké Hernández and Tommy Edman.
Hall allowed one hit in 2 1/3 scoreless innings to improve to 3-0 in these playoffs. Trevor Megill got four outs for his second save of the series and fourth this postseason.
The Dodgers played from behind again after the 22-year-old Chourio connected for his third career leadoff homer as fans were still heading to their seats.
After that, Mitchell walked and Cooper Pratt singled in the second before Snell retired 14 in a row — six on strikeouts — before getting hammered in the seventh.
The Dodgers had runners on base in all but three innings, but couldn’t get enough across. They have yet to homer in the NLCS.
Ohtani was 1 for 2 with a walk while hitting sixth in the order, the lowest he’s batted since joining the Dodgers three years ago.